


in motion

by kaiyen



Category: The Pacific (TV)
Genre: Angst, Happy Ending, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pining, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Repression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-27
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-09-01 12:06:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 16,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16764829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaiyen/pseuds/kaiyen
Summary: It takes him a while, but Eugene follows Snafu to New Orleans.Eugene doesn’t know what he wants from Snafu. Closure, maybe, but the thought of saying goodbye is bitter, acidic, rising in his throat like vomit. He never wants to say goodbye, and he hopes that may be why Snafu never woke him on the train. If he can find him, he wants to hold him close, never lose him again.He feels the weight of his Bible in his bag like a grenade in hand.





	1. scheherazade

**Author's Note:**

> hey.. can't believe i'm writing this about eight years late but i have newfound love of (and a comphet crush on??) joe mazzello and rewatched the pacific and now i'm here
> 
> i am not. entirely sure what this is going to be? there may be one more chapter or twenty. i'll see where the wind takes me or if there's actually still any interest in the fanbase but it's either going to be about repression or. not 
> 
> this deals loosely with religious and internalised homophobia. i've dealt with a lot of internalised homophobia myself, but not religious-based, so i hope i handled that sensitively
> 
> disclaimers: unbeta'd (please yell at me), purely meant as a response to the tv show (please _don't_ yell at me), i'm english so there may be various spelling/grammar hiccups, warning for some homophobic slurs typical of language at the time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just a quick one - café lafitte is a real place and one of the oldest (if not the oldest) gay bar in the us and has been going since the end of the prohibition era. no disrespect meant, apologies for any inaccuracies surrounding this

It is, after nearly a year under the worried eyes of his parents and the hot Alabama sun, a lapse in his stubbornness that leads Eugene to find himself on a train platform one breezy Thursday morning, fingers fraying the edges of a ticket to New Orleans as he waits. His backpack leans lightly against his leg, filled with little more than a spare change of clothes, a toothbrush and a razor. It’s impulsive, impractical, all the things Eugene never was before the war.

He feels as if it has been eons since he slept a whole night and he finds himself zoning out, staring off. He refuses to feel guilt for his mother, leaving without her knowing and nothing but a scribbled note on the dining room table, and finds himself thinking about what lies ahead. He worries his lip, pulls at the skin with his teeth as he does. Much like his smoking and his rashness, another bad habit.

The initial anger he felt at Snafu – _Merriell?_ He wonders, war nicknames seeming near inappropriate – for leaving him alone on the train as though they were strangers has long since settled. Now, more than anything, he finds himself somewhat wistful.

There have been nights where he’s laid awake in bed, the cold and empty expanse of clean sheets beside him and silent night air drifting through loose curtains, where he can almost taste the wet mud of the foxhole, hear the sound of guns in the distance, feel Snafu’s warm body pressed gently against his own.

Eugene tastes blood in his mouth and he’s pulled back to reality. He brushes his lip with his thumb, wiping away a spot of blood. The train whistles towards the platform and he stands, slinging his bag over his shoulder with one hand and holding his ticket with the other.

When he steps onto the train, he takes a seat opposite an elderly woman who doesn’t look up from her book. A spot of blood stains the corner of his ticket, and he shoves it into his pocket.

As the train pulls away from the station, away from Mobile, he stares out the window, unsure of when he’ll see Alabama again. He considers getting his notebook out of his bag, writing a little, like he has done for years whilst travelling, but he doesn’t do anything, nor could he do it anyway over the sound of his blood rushing in his ears.

Instead, he leans his head against the window, feeling the rumble of the train on the tracks like he once did the roll of explosions as he slept on the ground in Pavuvu.

Most men have moved on from the war, it seems to him. He hasn’t kept up with his company, but he has met plenty of soldiers who are back working normal, nine-to-five jobs. Even Sid, who has been at his side since Eugene could barely talk, has drifted to do such benign and ordinary things like get married and start a family.

Sid has told him time and time again that none of them have moved on, not really, but he struggles to believe him. He seems to be the only one giving up his hobbies and his prospects and his passions, just to smoke a pipe in the garden and think about gunfire and crying babies and his foxhole partner.

Eugene wonders if Snafu moved on. He wonders if he has a job and an apartment and a nice pretty wife. The thought makes his heart clench, and he hates it.

He isn’t as naïve as others seem to think – he knows, or at least he thinks he does, that the feelings he has surrounding Merriell Shelton aren’t solely about _friendship_. They run deeper within him, taking root in his heart and his veins like ivy. They’re feelings that good Southern boys like him shouldn’t be having.

He’s sure that a nice pretty wife isn’t Snafu’s style though, and he contemplates what is. He imagines a strong-willed and strong-boned woman to compete with Snafu’s own belligerence, or a lifetime of solitude, but Eugene can’t help but toy with the idea planted in his head by the scuttlebutt on camp.

Whispers of _queer_ and _fairy_ behind Shelton’s back, however derogatorily intended, had always made Eugene’s ears prick up, although at the time, he wasn’t quite sure why. He doesn’t know if there was any truth in it – the men outside of those closest to Shelton tended to come up with stories to explain why he behaved as he did – but it sure makes him wonder. No smoke without fire, his father always said.

They’re words that have been used on him, too. No smoke without fire there either, he supposes, but he’d grown out of those feelings long ago. He held no residual emotions for Sid, or George, his father’s protégé a few years before he shipped out. At least, he had thought so, before the war.

He’s sure Sid would tell him that he’s running away from his problems, from dealing with things, that it’s a bad coping mechanism. But really, he’s running towards the danger, towards New Orleans, towards Snafu. In some ways, he supposes, Sid would see that as running away – from normalcy, from confronting his issues, from whatever new-age nonsense Sid was spouting now.

Eugene doesn’t know what he wants from Snafu. Closure, maybe, but the thought of saying goodbye is bitter, acidic, rising in his throat like vomit. He never wants to say goodbye, and he hopes that may be why Snafu never woke him on the train. If he can find him, he wants to hold him close, never lose him again.

He feels the weight of his Bible in his bag like a grenade in hand.

The journey passes slowly, painfully, and Eugene feels his eyes drooping and his head nodding as he nearly falls asleep. He doesn’t want to, though, not least because he doesn’t want to miss New Orleans for a second time.

When the train finally pulls into New Orleans station, it’s mid-afternoon and the sun still hangs high in the sky. Eugene walks off the train with shaky legs, and is immediately hustled off the platform by the crowd. It’s busy and loud and he is suddenly struck with the realisation he has no idea where to start.

*

New Orleans, is as generally advertised, varied and ostentatious. Eugene thinks he’s seen more types of people in about half an hour in the city than he has in all of Mobile in twenty-odd years.

He wanders aimlessly for a long while. Nothing there is familiar, not that he ever expected it to be, and he begins to consider finding somewhere to stay the night. He looks distractedly for an inn or a hotel.

The bar he ends up outside, somehow, he recognises. He thinks he saw it in the one photograph of Snafu’s he’d seen, the one he was unable to resist sparing a glance at when the other man had gone outside to shower as heavy tropical rain began. It was battered, corners dog-eared, and in it were two young girls under the sign of a bar. They had dark hair and large eyes, and Eugene had assumed they were Snafu’s sisters. It was the only glimpse of anything of Snafu’s life he’d seen.

The sign he stares up at is the same as the one under which the girls stood. He doubts Snafu is in there, or even the girls, but it is his only link to his whereabouts, so he enters.

The bar is empty save for an old man who seems to be asleep on his crossed arms at the bar and a slightly younger man with a dark beard stood behind it. He looks to Eugene expectantly, coldly, but doesn’t say anything. Eugene feels slightly unsettled, similar to how he felt when he first met Snafu himself.

“Afternoon,” he manages, clearing his throat and trying his best not to stutter. “Do you know where I can find Merriell Shelton?”

The man’s stony expression doesn’t change. “Ain’t seen him for a long while,” he says. “Can’t say I’d know why you’d want to find him.”

Eugene pulls apart a tissue he has in his pocket distractedly. “He’s a war buddy.”

“That what you’re calling it?” The bartender says. Eugene doesn’t really understand what he means, but he nearly flinches anyway. “Try Café Lafitte. Bourbon Street,” he answers shortly, and Eugene can’t help but think he’s just trying to get him out of the bar.

“Okay,” he replies. “Thank you.” He leaves hurriedly.

It takes him a while to find Bourbon Street, and he wanders distractedly through the French Quarter until he ends up on the right street.

Eugene walks for a long while before he finds the Café, traipsing down the paved sidewalk of Bourbon Street until he reaches a corner. The building looks old, with a hipped roof and dark wooden doors in its raw bricked structure. A tall woman leans outside the door, cigarette in between her long, nail-polished fingers. Her dark hair is styled immaculately, her red dress matching her lipstick.

“Is this Café Lafitte?” he asks as he approaches.

She looks him up and down like she’s assessing _something_ , before she nods. “You got it, sugar.” Her voice is rich, kind. When he doesn’t immediately enter, she pushes the door slightly ajar and raises an eyebrow. He steps inside.

It’s fairly quiet, nothing like the last bars he’s been to (Sid’s stag night and his arrival back in Mobile). The door closes loudly behind him, and he jumps. The young man behind the bar looks up.

“It’ll liven up soon,” he says in a soft voice, a face much kinder than the previous bartender. “Come on, get yourself a drink.”

He takes a look around. It’s clean, and empty but for two young women sat particularly close to each other in one corner, along with a group of academic-type middle-aged men making quiet conversation over their wine glasses. It’s well-lit, and the bartender looks at him with a friendly face.

Eugene has grown up a little sheltered, a little coddled, but he knows exactly what type of bar this is. He’s heard about them, whispered and mocked by his classmates, although he never thought they were real. There were never any in Mobile, by any means. He knows where he is, and yet it’s nothing like he’s been told, like it was some reprehensible den of sin. It is, at its core, just a bar.

He wants to leave, but he doesn’t really, and his feet slowly draw him to the bar before his mind can fully process it. He sits on the barstool, and the bartender smiles at his apparent anxiety.

“First time?” he asks. Receiving no reply, he continues. “What can I get you, doll?”

“Uh, beer. Please.”

A bottle is placed in front of him fairly quickly. “What brings you here, stranger?”

“I’m looking for a friend,” he says.

“A friend,” the bartender repeats coyly and brushes his pinkie across Eugene’s knuckles where they sit against the condensation on the glass bottle. Eugene’s surprised when he doesn’t flinch. “Shame,” he says, and steps away, beginning to clean the shelving behind him.

Eugene watches him work for a beat, the tautness of his white shirt across his broad shoulders. It’s too small and too tight, and he’s sure it’s not because he’d grown out of it. When he catches himself staring, he coughs and takes a swig of his beer. “Don’t suppose you know a Merriell Shelton?”

The bartender turns, raising an eyebrow. “That your friend?” he asks. When Eugene nods, he leans back and puts his cloth down. “You’re in his usual spot. Sure he’ll be in soon to kick you off that chair.”

He feels a well of something that could be excitement, could be anxiety.

No smoke without fire, indeed.

He and the bartender make easy conversation for a while, and Eugene is loosely aware he is being flirted with. He finds his eyes on the door quite often, whenever the bartender turns his back so as not to seem rude.

Snafu manages to surprise him anyway.

“Sledgehammer,” he hears to his right, and by the sound of his voice, he’s surprised Snafu too, the nickname phrased somewhere between a statement and a question.

Eugene turns and his eyes meet Snafu’s for the first time in nearly a year. Snafu looks good – tanned, un-muddied skin and dark, curly hair that’s been cleaned in the last few days rather than the last few months – save for the dark circles under his eyes that match Eugene’s own.

“Hey,” he says weakly, and wonders why he didn’t put more thought into it.

There’s something like shock in Snafu’s eyes, something like wonder on his lips, and Eugene’s heart lurches. He sits down on the stool next to him, and Eugene sees the bartender’s surprised look at his not being asked to move.

Snafu doesn’t even have to order before a glass of whiskey is placed in front of him. He nods his thanks and takes a gulp.

“What you doing here, Sledge?” he asks.

It is a reasonable question, and one for which Eugene doesn’t particularly have an answer.

“Why’d you leave?” he asks instead.

Snafu glances sideways to him with a slight smile to which Eugene couldn’t assign an emotion. “I asked first,” he says.

“I don’t know,” Eugene replies. He looks at Snafu pointedly. _Your turn_.

“I don’t know,” Snafu repeats in turn.

Silence hangs in the air between them like a stench. Eugene thought he had so much to say, but he can’t seem to construct anything passable as a sentence. His heart is in his throat, threatening to choke him, and he can’t get any words past it.

“You staying someplace?” Snafu asks, at last. It feels awkward, loaded. 

“No,” Eugene replies simply, because it’s the truth. His plan barely reached further than the New Orleans platform.

“Well,” Snafu says, eyes on his drink, “guess you’ll be needing somewhere.”

He looks at his bottle. The condensation has all but gone now, and a small puddle surrounds it on the wooden surface of the bar. “Guess I will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes the title is from the social network soundtrack i'm valid


	2. plausible deniability

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what's poppin i wrote another chapter and it's not the end
> 
> once again. unbeta'd correct me of any mistakes please

The bar livens up as soon as the sun goes down, and Eugene finds himself jostled by bohemian patrons even as he sits on his stool. The noise of chatter fills the bar, but his ears are ringing and he can’t hear anything except the absence of sound coming from Snafu’s mouth. His beer has been empty for a while, and Snafu is tending to his third whiskey.

He can’t help but feel like something has broken between them. Or perhaps, it was never there in the first place, but where something should have been, there is a blockade, an invisible wall between their bodies.

So much was different in war, between the relationships between men in the company and interactions back at home. Bodies against bodies, gentle hands brushing over skin, intimacy like Eugene has never known. It was never criticised, sometimes even encouraged. It was alright, it was acceptable, because it was war, and war is hell. Home, though, most men had settled back into the old routine of suitable distance.

He misses the contact. He doesn’t think he’s received more than a clasp on the shoulder, or a brief hug from his mother or Mary and his skin is gasping for something more solid, more tender, drowning against the loneliness of empty air.

Their hands are close on the bar, Eugene’s left on his bottle and Snafu’s right on his glass. Their elbows are almost touching. It wouldn’t take much to brush up against him, close the space between them, and though he yearns for it, he does not – cannot – move his arm. It would take bravery Eugene has never had, strength he could never summon, parallel lines doomed never to meet.

Abruptly, Snafu drains his glass, and Eugene looks away from the curve of his throat as he does so and swallows thickly. Snafu pulls out his wallet and places a few notes on the bar, nodding to the bartender and standing. Eugene stares after him as he backs through the crowd, and he thinks for one tense moment he is leaving without a goodbye once more.

But Snafu turns, gives him one of his funny looks, and says loudly, “You coming?”

Eugene scrambles to his feet.

*

The night is mild and the moon is bright, people still hustling in the street even though Eugene’s sure it must be pushing midnight. He isn’t sure though, his watch still strewn on his desk in Alabama where he left it.

They still don’t speak on the walk to Snafu’s house, but Eugene doesn’t miss the glances Snafu throws at him when he thinks he isn’t looking, like he still can’t believe or understand his presence. It’s late, and he’s tired, and he supposes that it wouldn’t be the smartest time to have a conversation with any sort of importance.

The silence between them is odd. Eugene feels cautious with his words in a way he never was back in Pavuvu. He puts it down to being 8000 miles from where they met, where they knew each other; he doesn’t really know where he stands with the Snafu he walks beside. The Snafu who probably goes by Merriell now, who barely talks, who walked away from him on the train.

He looks at Snafu then, with his distracted expression and moonlight drizzling through his hair, and his heart aches when he finds he doesn’t know if he’s looking at a stranger or a friend.

The house is at the end of his street, woodworm-chewed windows overlooking an ill-kept front yard. It’s small, and one of the windows is boarded up. There is still some broken glass on the ground below it, although it is beginning to be twisted into the roots of an unkempt shrub.

Snafu pulls out a key and unlocks the door with a few shoves, opening into a dark, fairly open house. The light he switches on is yellow and unyielding. Eugene can’t see a kitchen yet, although he supposes the door at the back of the living room might lead to it. Snafu’s living room is small, with two mismatched couches and a small table on which an ashtray and a newspaper is placed. The staircase is against the wall and leads on from the door. Some of the stairs appear to be rotting.

Eugene is suddenly very aware of his own privileges.

“Bedroom’s upstairs,” Snafu says. “I’ll take the couch.”

“No,” Eugene replies quickly, frowning. “I’ll take the couch.”

Snafu puts his hands on his hips. “I ain’t a bad host, Eugene,” he says, and the use of his first name makes Eugene pause for a second.

“You’ve done enough by letting me stay at all,” he counters. “I’ll take the couch,” he repeats. When Snafu makes a face like he’s about to argue, Eugene interrupts. “Merriell. I’ll take the couch.”

Snafu looks taken aback very briefly, before he gives a wry smile that doesn’t quite meet his eyes. “Suit yourself, Sledgehammer.”

He heads upstairs immediately after that, and Eugene puts his bag down at the end of the couch. He places his shoes next to it, and takes his pants off and shoves them into his bag so he’s just left in a white t-shirt and boxers. He hears Snafu come back down the stairs and looks up. Snafu chucks a blanket at him, which he almost doesn’t catch, and bids him good night.

The couch is somewhat lumpy, frame sticking out in places it shouldn’t, but Eugene’s fussiness in where he sleeps quickly dissipated as soon as he started training with the Marines. He pulls the surprisingly soft blanket up to his chest. It smells of Snafu, his mind analyses uselessly, and he can’t work out if that makes him feel better or worse.

What Eugene does realise, though, is that he is very tired. He can’t remember not being tired, most of his nights disturbed and restless, and is surprised that he hadn’t noticed before. His eyelids are heavy and as he drifts off, he can hear the creak of floorboards upstairs.

His dreams, as usual, are haunted by armies. Their faces are unclear, blurred like ghosts, and he can’t make anyone out. The sun his hot and the metal of his gun blisters in it. The mud on his skin feels like it’s baking in the heat like clay. He can feel the mortar shake under his mud-crusted hands, can smell the metallic stench of blood twist in his sinuses. He bites his cheek, and he can taste it too.

He is aware it’s loud – it has to be, the heavy thunder of destruction surrounding him, submerging him – but everything is so muffled, indistinct voices shouting over the cracks of bullets. He can hear his breathing, feel his heart beating an overture in his chest.

The explosions fade, the gunfire ceases. He looks across the smoking ground, stands, turns slowly. He hears crying, the wailing of a child. He is alone, no one else standing. He is alone, and the baby screams. It fills up his senses and he doesn’t know where it is, can’t help it. His ears ring, and it still screams, so he covers his ears, and it still screams. He can feel anxiety rising in his chest, flooding into his throat and stifling, choking–

There are hands on his arms, on his shoulders, on his neck and his face, and he launches upwards, hyperventilating. A hand strokes his hair. He sees Snafu through tears, sat on the edge of the couch with a concerned but calm look on his face. His lips are moving, and Eugene is vaguely aware of litanies of _hey_ , and _easy_ , and _Eugene_ , softer than he’s ever heard Snafu speak, though he can’t seem to fit the sounds to his mouth.

Snafu gently touches his shoulders, pulling him forward, and when he doesn’t resist, he wraps an arm around his back and lets Eugene lean his head onto his shoulder as he gets a grasp on his heaving gasps.

They sit there for a while; all he can hear is his and Snafu’s breathing and the sound of crickets outside. He thinks briefly, insanely, that he’ll get mud on Snafu’s light grey t-shirt. He considers saying it, but he feels his vocal cords strangle him into silence before he can, and simply lets himself feel Snafu’s chest rising and falling evenly.

When his own breath evens out, he reluctantly pulls back from Snafu, uncurling a fist he didn’t know he had clenched from Snafu’s shirt. He leans away from Snafu, resting his back against the arm of the couch and lifts his gaze back to Snafu’s eyes. He’s still looking at him with that concerned expression, stormy eyes bright even in the darkness of the room, and Eugene can feel all of the ten inches between them.

Snafu stands, and for a second Eugene thinks he’s leaving, his side suddenly cold, and his anxiety bubbles again. Then Snafu takes a hold of his shaking wrist and pulls him to standing. He’s quiet, and Eugene is reminded of the few quiet nights in Peleliu, the absence of distant explosions and gunshots leaving the atmosphere raw and dangerous.

He’s unsteady at first, pressure filling his head, and he lets himself be pulled out of the room. Eugene is led out of the room, up the rotting wooden stairs and into Snafu’s bed. It’s marginally more comfortable than the couch. He doesn’t say a word when the mattress dips and Snafu gets into bed next to him, back turned.

Eugene glances to him, and the wall between them is there again. His silhouette is lit by the dull orange of a streetlamp outside as it leaks through Snafu’s moth-bitten curtains. When nothing more is said for a few minutes, Eugene is sure Snafu must have fallen asleep. He stares at the wooden ceiling.

“Why did you leave?” he asks quietly, hoarsely, not really expecting a response. He didn’t receive one before in the bar, so it seems unlikely that he’ll gain a response from Snafu’s unconscious form.

The room is silent, and he can see Snafu’s body move with his shallow breaths out of the corner of his eye. He lets his eyes drift shut and exhales.

“You don’t want me, Sledgehammer,” Snafu says quietly, not turning around. “I’ll fuck you up.”

 _You already have_ , Eugene thinks, but doesn’t say it.


	3. accipiter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey! thanks a lot for your comments on this! it's been a while since i've written for a small community so really a big thank you for like. keeping me going on this
> 
> uh this time i don't actually have another chapter already written and i've got a lot of things to do in the coming couple of weeks so apologies if i'm slow on updating
> 
> again - unbeta'd, yell at me if anything's wrong

By the time Eugene is woken by the sunrise, he’s already alone. It must be early, he thinks, and he can smell toast. His father always told him that was a sign of a stroke. As he stares up at the ceiling, it plays on his mind for a moment, but in the end he rolls out of bed just fine.

The stairs are rough under his bare feet, and he can feel the nails where they jut out of the woodwork. In the daylight, downstairs really isn’t much different, but Eugene thinks it feels slightly kinder than it did the night before. The door in the living room is open – it is a kitchen, he was right – and he enters.

Snafu sits at the table, white t-shirt and beige trousers that could probably do with replacing. He has a half-eaten slice of toast in one hand, newspaper folded in half in the other, and a mug of coffee steams on the table in front of him. On the other side of the table is another mug.

“Made you coffee,” he says, looking up.

“Thanks,” Eugene says and sits down opposite him.

He takes a sip. It’s not great, but his early morning body craves it like a drug. Snafu has turned his gaze back to the newspaper. There isn’t tension in the air like there was last night, but the lack of conversation still feels odd. Snafu used to talk his mouth off.

“Why you here, Sledgehammer?” Snafu asks, cutting off his thoughts.

“Don’t call me that,” he finds himself saying, and he’s slightly taken aback by himself at its sharpness. He doesn’t take it back, though. He’s hung up his dress blues, he can hang up the old war nicknames.

Snafu just half-smiles. “Why you here?” he repeats. “Eugene,” he tacks on the end in that almost-mocking tone of his.

His name sounds strange in Snafu’s mouth, though he’s sure he’s said it before, like it doesn’t quite belong. He finds he likes it anyway. He tries not to analyse that too deeply.

“Wondered how you were,” he answers after a moment. It is, mostly, the truth, however incomplete. Perhaps it may constitute the whole truth if he doesn’t actually know the rest of it. “I needed to get away,” he adds, which is also true.

“What’s your mama think of that?” Snafu asks.

“I don’t know,” he replies. “I didn’t tell her I was leaving.” The grin Snafu is giving him can only be described as holding a misplaced sense of pride. Eugene feels a hot flash of guilt in his stomach, but he quickly squashes it. “I left her note,” he adds, as if that makes it better.

The look doesn’t leave Snafu’s face. “Eugene Sledge, you rebel,” he drawls, and even if Eugene couldn’t see it, wasn’t looking at him – which he certainly is, he finds it hard not to – he’d hear the smile in his voice.

Eugene grins. It’s his first real smile in months.

*

Snafu works a lot. At least that’s what Eugene thinks he does for the whole day when he disappears for all of it; they don’t really talk about it. Snafu tends to redirect the conversation whenever Eugene tries to ask him.

Eugene has been in New Orleans for six nights, and they’ve slept in the same bed for all of them. Snafu comes to bed after him, and leaves before him, but reliably wakes him up and calms him down when he dreams.

His nightmares have started improving, just a little. He didn’t have one on Sunday night, and he’s only had one on the other nights as well. Back home, he’d be woken several times before giving up on sleeping entirely. The deep blue bags under his eyes have started to alleviate, and his head is less clouded.

Snafu doesn’t seem to have nightmares, at least none that have woken him up. Then again, he’s always been a deep sleeper. He’d like to think his presence is helping Snafu too, but the dark rings under his eyes that matched Eugene’s haven’t faded. The thought brings an uneasiness to Eugene’s stomach, although he isn’t sure quite what it is.

He is – more than Snafu probably knows – very appreciative of his improved sleep, but with it brings a clarity Eugene hasn’t had in months. He knows how he feels towards Snafu. They’re feelings he thought he had held for Mary Houston, back prior to the war, but now he’s actually, truly, experiencing them, he knows he was wrong before.

The worst thing is that he cannot find in himself any guilt for them, no matter what he’s been told his whole life. That – above the feelings themselves – is what bewilders him the most.

When Snafu comes home that night, Eugene is reading the ornithology book he bought in the city that day (or more accurately, he’s staring at the same page that he’s had open for two hours). The key rattles in the door, and he hears Snafu lift the door slightly where it jams as he enters. He looks up and watches him as he comes in.

The dark circles are still there, and looking closer he can see tension and tiredness riddling all of Snafu’s features as he enters. It’s more deep-set than anything a hard day’s work should bring.

“Something on my face?” Snafu asks, breaking Eugene’s stupor.

“No,” he answers quickly, turning his gaze to his book. He can see Snafu pause, shift his weight to his other foot and raise an eyebrow in his periphery.

“Anything interesting?”

“Hawks,” Eugene replies, reading the page for the first time.

“Oh,” Snafu says, nods. He heads to the kitchen.

Eugene is grateful he doesn’t press. Snafu never seems to press, unlike his parents, unlike his brother, unlike Sid, and it’s exactly what he needs. Someone who understands but doesn’t need an explanation.

He thinks maybe he should press Snafu, see if he’s alright. It’s a pointless question, though; he clearly isn’t, just as Eugene isn’t. It’s just he’s a whole lot better at helping Eugene than Eugene is with helping him.

Snafu pops his head around the doorway to the kitchen. “You want food?”

He just stares, recollecting his thoughts. Snafu seems to tire of this quickly.

“Ain’t got much, but I can do some eggs.”

His stomach growls and he realises he hasn’t eaten since breakfast. He frowns. “Yes,” he answers. “Please,” he adds, remembering his manners.

Snafu grunts and returns to the kitchen.

He feels as if he should say something, do something to show Snafu that he’s grateful for everything. He hasn’t even been asked how long he’s staying, and it’s been nearly a week. Nearly a week living in Snafu’s house and he’s been generally unsupportive.

The sketch of the goshawk on his page stares at him judgementally.

“Hey, Snaf?” he calls.

“Yeah?” he hears from the kitchen, along with the sizzle of something in a pan. He can’t see Snafu through the doorway.

He wets his lip. “Merriell,” he says loudly. The name tastes odd on his tongue.

That _does_ cause Snafu to reappear, sleeves rolled up and hands on his hips. His face is soft in the yellowing light of the kitchen, a sort of pleasant surprise behind his eyes. Eugene makes a note to use Snafu’s first name more often if that’s the look it gets him. “Yeah, Eugene?”

“Thank you.”

He frowns. “What for?”

Eugene pauses, unsure what to say. “Everything,” he tries.

Snafu gives him an odd look, but there’s something warm on his face he seems to be trying to cover up. “It ain’t no thing,” he replies. He pauses for a moment, seems to consider something. “Eugene,” he adds, and ducks back into the kitchen.

Eugene tries to smother a smile he doesn’t quite understand the cause of and turns his eyes back to his book.

*

After a quiet evening by the radio and some rather dry – though he wouldn’t tell Snafu that – scrambled eggs, Eugene bids Snafu goodnight and heads to bed.

When his head hits the pillow, he resists the urge to go to sleep, no matter how much he feels like he’s sinking into the sheets. The night is dark, no moon in the sky to weep through the tattered curtains, and he leaves the lamp on for Snafu. He’s never had much trouble sleeping in light.

The thing is, Eugene isn’t stupid. No matter how much Snafu – _Merriell_ – tries to hide it, he can tell that something’s wrong. He’s tired, drained, and Eugene knows that feeling all too well. He hopes it isn’t anything to do with having him in his bed. He intends to work it out, let Merriell fall asleep before him for once.

Eugene closes his eyes and listens to the creaks of the staircase and the floorboards as Snafu turns in for the night. He hears clothes thrown on the chair in the corner of the room, a rustle of a different shirt, the brushing of teeth, before the mattress dips beside him.

Though he expects Snafu to turn the lamp off immediately, he doesn’t. It stays on even as he feels Merriell pull the sheets over him. He waits, eyes still closed. It doesn’t turn off.

Snafu doesn’t turn the light off for what must be well over an hour, possibly two, and Eugene can’t help but think he must’ve been waiting to wake Eugene if he had another nightmare. He’s usually only been asleep for an hour or so when Merriell’s woken him the previous nights. He feels something soft settle in his chest.

Merriell goes to sleep quickly – Eugene can imagine how tired he is – and he listens to his soft snoring for a short while. He finds himself drifting in an out of consciousness.

He wakes, suddenly, realising he’d fallen asleep, and it could very easily have been ten minutes or six hours. The night is still dark, however, and Snafu is still next to him.

The snoring has stopped, though.

He can hear Snafu muttering under his breath, can feel a tremor in his sheets. He thinks there might be soft cries too, and he shoots up and turns over. He kneels next to Merriell on the bed and the mattress springs scrape in protest. He places a hand on his shaking shoulder and rolls him onto his back.

“Snafu?” he says, heart clenching at the pained expression on the other man’s face. Tear tracks are visible even in the darkened room. “Snafu?” he tries again, shaking his shoulder.

The touch seems to startle him, although he remains asleep, and he cries out. Eugene recoils his hand.

“Hey,” he says, repeats it several times as he shakes his shoulder again, more gently this time. “Come on, it’s okay,” he soothes.

Snafu tosses beneath him, like he’s trying to get away, like he’s making it worse. Eugene’s chest hurts, anxiety bubbling in his gut. It almost doesn’t feel real, the shame of his own hopelessness, guilt at not being able to help Snafu back, clouding everything.

“Merriell,” he says. “Merriell,” he says, and it cuts through the haze like a sword. He cups Merriell’s jaw, grazing his thumb against his cheek. A slight jostle of his head is all it takes.

Merriell comes to abruptly and stares at him without recognition. Eugene withdraws his hand and for a moment, he thinks he might be punched. Instead, he watches as Merriell’s face shifts to confusion. A slow hand comes up to touch him, and it crosses his mind to move away, to flinch. He doesn’t, and Merriell’s gentle fingers brush against his cheek, like he can’t quite believe he’s there. His skin tingles, and the way Merriell looks at him – awe, possibly, lips slightly apart – makes him want to do something stupid.

He softly takes a grasp of Merriell’s wrist and breaks the contact. Neither of them speak as he places the hand down onto the bed, lingering for a moment before he lets go. He lies back down, turns away, hoping sleep will win out over his churning gut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the chapter number is based mostly on what i have planned, but as it is as yet unwritten it is open to change. i am yet to leave a work unfinished though (and i've written far more than are just on this account) so you know. should be ok


	4. tachycardia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i was on a right roll today i wrote 4.5k.. skipping lectures for mild nausea pays off i guess
> 
> anyway - unbeta'd, yell at me if anything sticks out

When Eugene wakes, Snafu is still asleep for the first time since he’s got there. He lays on his front, sort of spread out, the absence of any lines of worry on his face making him seem younger, and it occurs to Eugene how young they both still are. They’re supposed to have decades left, yet Eugene feels like they could be gone in an instant, like ash in a breeze. Merriell’s dark hair falls loosely over the edges of his lax face, and Eugene has to resist the urge to brush the curls from his forehead.

Instead, he soundlessly gets out of bed and heads downstairs, stepping lightly on the steps, wincing as every creak scrapes against his eardrum. He hasn’t been down before Snafu, and some part of him feels a duty to make breakfast.

Merriell’s kitchen cupboards are poorly stocked, and Eugene makes a mental note to head into town at some point and buy some food. It’s the least he can do, and while he had never been particularly bulky, Eugene doesn’t like how he can count Merriell’s ribs like a stray dog’s.

By the time Snafu comes downstairs looking somewhere towards well-rested, hair mussed with a sort of dazed expression on his face, Eugene has fried up some eggs and toasted some bread and is putting it onto plates on the counter, coffee steaming on the table.

“Morning,” Snafu greets, hovering behind him like he wants to help.

“Sit down,” Eugene tells him.

Merriell smirks. “Yes, sir,” he replies drolly and goes to sit at the table.

Eugene smothers a smile as he spoons the eggs onto the toast. He heads to the table, placing the plates on opposite sides and sits down on the other side of the table to Snafu. They eat, and the bread is a little stale – although that is mostly covered by the fact the toast is on the borderline of being burnt – but Snafu doesn’t comment. He looks quite appreciative, in fact.

“Thanks, Eugene,” he says as he finishes, picking up his plate along with Eugene’s own empty one and taking it to the sink.

Eugene nods and looks at yesterday’s paper where it’s folded on the table. He looks at the date and realises he’s been there about a week now and that he should probably write back home to reassure his mother.

He wants to ask Merriell if he can use his address for the return details, but it crosses his mind that it might be presumptuous to assume he’ll continue to stay. He bites his lip and turns to face Snafu, or more accurately to face Snafu’s back as he washes the dishes and the pan.

“How long can I stay?” he asks and finds his leg bouncing lightly, channelling nervous energy its far too early to be having.

Merriell doesn’t turn around, but Eugene sees him shrug. “Long as you like, Sledge.”

He feels a smile ghost his lips and something warm glow in his chest. “Thank you,” he says. “Really.”

Merriell throws him an incredulous look over his shoulder.

“Can I have your address?” he asks as well, carefully, not wanting to try his luck. “I want to write home.”

“You’ve been here a week and you still don’t know where you are?” Snafu jokes, and Eugene can hear the smile in his voice. “’Course. I’ll write it down before I leave.”

Eugene nods his thanks, and Merriell finishes washing up. He disappears for a while and Eugene finishes his coffee. When he comes back, he’s fully dressed and holding a piece of paper torn from a notebook.

“Here,” he says as he hands it to Eugene. “There’s a mailbox on the edge of town. About five minutes away, not far.”

He goes out after that, leaving Eugene alone in his home once more.

*

Eugene goes to town that afternoon. He buys a few pens, an envelope and a stamp, along with some food other than eggs and bread. He finds he quite likes New Orleans. It surprises him a bit, always thinking himself more of a fan of rural areas, but he enjoys the bustle of the people and how colourful the city is.

He walks back slowly, taking in the sights, and when he gets back he puts the food away and finds himself wondering when he fell into this domesticity.

He writes to his mother that evening. He apologises, feeling slightly bad that he doesn’t mean it, and tells her he’s staying with a war buddy and he doesn’t know when he’ll be back. He copies the address Merriell left him, struggling to read his scrawl and seals the letter. He’ll post it tomorrow, he thinks, see if he can persuade Merriell into a diner for lunch or dinner, if he can find out if he’d be allowed a lunch break at work or if they’d have to go after.

It’s dark by the time he finishes, after the time Snafu would usually be back, and Eugene goes to the kitchen to make them dinner. He needs to start pulling his weight, he thinks with a level of amusement. It’d probably be useful if he could actually cook, he thinks, but the fresh bread and sliced chicken he bought are still nicer than a lot of what Merriell had in his cupboard, so he makes a couple of sandwiches and waits.

Merriell doesn’t come back then, nor does he come back an hour later when Eugene’s stomach protests at not eating the food he made. He gives in a half-hour later, eats his sandwich, his enjoyment slightly sullied by the feeling of worry in his stomach. A half-hour later than that, he’s progressed to some level of annoyance, and he puts Snafu’s sandwich in the fridge and goes to wash up his own plate.

He does so, placing it onto the rack on the edge of the sink to drain. He stares at himself in the window as he dries his hands, the reflection clear against the dark night.

A car back-fires outside, a woman yelps in surprise before the car harshly comes to life, spluttering shots against the still of the night. For a moment, Eugene is back there, with a mud-coated gun in his hand and shells buzzing past his ears. He takes a deep breath and it stutters in his throat. He swallows it like a chunk of meat.

He releases the white-knuckle grasp he has on the counter, but he’s not sure when he ever clenched his hands over its edge.

Eugene hears the car leave, drive off down the street, and once his ears stop ringing and his legs stop aching from the adrenaline rush, the night returns to its prior quiet. He closes his eyes and pinches his brow.

It isn’t quite silent though, and he frowns, strains to listen to sounds he could very well be imagining. There’s a scraping at the door, nails scratching against wood, and what sounds like a wheezing breath from outside. Eugene stumbles on shaky legs to the door and opens it. 

He is met by the sight of Snafu, sat on the doorstep with his chest heaving, shaking hand lowering to the wooden stair as the door opens behind him, moving out of reach. He looks up to Eugene with panic and tears that don’t belong in those eyes, and Eugene sits down beside him, turned towards him. His heart is in his throat, any irritation he had dissipating. His hands hover, unsure where to put them.

He’s trying to speak, Eugene thinks, but his staggering breaths aren’t letting him. Eugene places a hand on the one Merriell has clutched to his own chest over his heart. He looks into Eugene’s eyes with a sharpness that only fear can impart. Eugene brings his other hand up to grasp the back of his neck.

“I’m dying, Sledge,” Merriell says, or tries to say. Eugene gets the gist anyway.

“No, you’re not,” he replies, tries to say it with comfort rather than dismissal.

Merriell shakes his head and Eugene grasps the back of his neck tighter, pulls Merriell’s hand away from his chest and towards his own.

“You’re not,” he assures. He breaths deeply, pressing Snafu’s palm against his own steady ribcage. “You’re okay.”

He isn’t sure how long he sits there, letting Merriell feel his breathing and listening to him inhale sharply through his nose and out through his mouth with a stagger, but eventually Merriell nods, and Eugene drops his hands from where they touch him.

They sit there for a few minutes in silence, Eugene listening to nothing but Snafu’s evening-out breathing. He glances to Snafu’s hands where they sit in his lap and finds them still shaking.

“Why’re you back so late?” he asks eventually, breaking the silence. It’s soft, no charge in his words.

Merriell doesn’t reply immediately. Eugene wonders if he’ll get a reply at all. “I went to Lafitte,” he says though and his voice is hoarse.

Eugene feels something strangely possessive spur inside of him, and he forces himself to look away from Snafu.

“I wanted to-” he starts, swallows, stops. “I needed to…” he trails off, makes a sort of tilting gesture with his head like Eugene’s supposed to know what that means. He does, deep down. “I couldn’t, wouldn’t-” he breathes in deeply. “I left. I couldn’t do anything,” it sounds oddly accusative, but Eugene takes no offense.

He watches Merriell clumsily retrieve a box of cigarettes from his pocket and put one in his mouth before stumbling with his lighter.

His fingers are trembling, the lighter spitting sparks as he flicks the wheel several times but fails to light the cigarette in his mouth. Eugene watches as his breathing begins to quicken again.

“Hey,” he says, gently taking the lighter from Snafu’s hand. “Come here.”

He lights a flame, cups Merriell’s jaw, ignoring how he leans into the touch, and steadily holds the fire to the end of the cigarette. He hears Snafu inhale a shaky breath he does, watches him clench and unclench his eyes. The tobacco burns a soft glow, and Merriell’s blue eyes gleam in its gold as he looks up at Eugene. Eugene drops his hand from Snafu’s face, his thumb brushing lightly across his stubble before it falls to his lap, cold. Merriell continues to stare at him.

Eugene lets his gaze linger.

He knows why Merriell frequented – frequents, possibly still – Lafitte. The need for contact, the escapism, he understands it even as it manifests differently to his own. He knows why he frequented Lafitte, and yet he wants to ask. He doesn’t need to, but he wants. He wants to know if it was men or if it didn’t matter, wants to know if Merriell’s a queer or if he’s just desperate. He wants to know who touched him, and Eugene can feel unreleased tension in his hands as they urge to clench into fists.

He swallows the lump in his throat and looks away, facing forward. He can see Merriell turn his gaze to the street too out of the corner of his eye.

Merriell leans his shoulder gently against Eugene’s, the same tender reassurance he gave when his dog died. Although this time, Eugene isn’t sure whether the comfort is meant for Merriell or himself. He leans into it all the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter is written! i'll probably post it in a couple of days but i like having a buffer to write the one after that one but let me tell you. slow burn boutta combust


	5. wonderstruck

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello.. not to toot my own horn but i quite like this chapter
> 
> warnings for period typical use of the q slur (esp bc 'gay' wasn't as common place)

The sandwich Eugene made goes down well with Merriell, and Eugene watches him eat while he makes hot cocoa. His mom used to make it for him when he was upset; it was the only thing she didn’t ever ask the servants to make for him, and although he doesn’t think Snafu’s panic attack on the doorstep is quite comparable to his scraping his knee as a child, he hopes it’ll be helpful in some way.

He feels a bit like he’s hovering, especially when Merriell leaves the room to sit on the couch and he follows behind with a mug in hand. He places it on the side table next to the seat Snafu has chosen. He sits down on the other couch.

It’s quiet, the calm after a storm, and Eugene wonders if it’d be insensitive to ask the question that’s been playing on his mind for since he first heard those mutterings on camp. He must open and close his mouth several times, before he decides he shouldn’t.

“You can ask, you know,” Snafu says, eyes watching the mug of cocoa clasped between his hands. “No need to sit there flapping your mouth like a guppy.”

Eugene stares. He’s sure Merriell isn’t psychic, nor that he possesses sufficient expertise regarding Eugene’s body language to know exactly what he wants to ask, but it soothes his worries all the same. “Are you?” he asks, as if that means anything whatsoever. When Merriell gives him a dubious look, he stutters, “I mean-”

“You mean am I queer?” Merriell asks.

It takes Eugene a moment to realise that there’s no meanness in his voice, and he’s staring at Eugene expecting an answer. He feels like he won’t be able to say anything without clearing his throat and he doesn’t want to break the delicate thread of the moment, so he just nods.

Merriell shrugs. “Suppose. Ain’t no bother to me.”

It surprises Eugene a little how blasé he is with it. He wonders whether it’s because Merriell trusts him or because he figures that whatever his reaction, he holds more of the cards. That being said, the way Merriell looks at him expectantly isn’t challenging. There are more undertones of anxiety there than he’d imagine. Eugene nods again, hopes it’s reassuring.

For a moment, Eugene expects the same question to come his way. _Are you queer, Eugene?_ It flares a nervousness in veins, uncertainty, and he thinks if Merriell does then he’d find himself bolting out the front door and running away for a second time.

Merriell doesn’t ask, not in so many words. “That why you come up here, Eugene?”

In some ways, it is why he came, but it’s less to do with Merriell and more about himself. Back in Alabama, every time he’d thought about that possibility – the one Eugene can’t talk about but knows, deep down – his gut would flip, like it was revolting against his own body. Somehow, in New Orleans, it simply simmers, as if being away from the watchful eyes of his parents and the foreboding presence of his church have released him from their clutches.

Eugene realises he hasn’t replied to Snafu’s question, but Snafu doesn’t seem to care. He takes a sip of his cocoa and gives Eugene an oddly sympathetic look, like he _knows_. Something inside him leaps at his throat, claws at it, tries to get him to defend himself, to take it as an insult.

A different something takes one look at Merriell’s eyes, soft and kind looking at him in a way he’d never looked at anyone else in their company, and it just melts, soothing that scrabbling feeling within.

“I don’t know,” he says, answering both the asked and unasked question. 

Merriell seems satisfied enough with the answer and nods slowly. Eugene thinks he must know. He thinks he might say something else, state that he does, but he doesn’t, simply stands and takes his empty mug to the kitchen.

When he returns, he doesn’t sit back down and Eugene knows he’s going to bed.

“You ever been in love?” Eugene finds himself ask abruptly, and it surprises even himself.

Something that has been drilled into him by years of church and Southern private school tells him it’s a stupid question to ask. Men cannot love men, women cannot love women, that is something reserved only for a man and woman. But his emotions have been challenging his beliefs for months now, and he can’t bring himself to let that one go.

He just smiles wryly. “Have you?”

 _Maybe_ , Eugene thinks as he watches Merriell ascend up the stairs. When he follows a few minutes later, Merriell is already asleep.

*

His mouth tastes sharp, like too much pepper. He thinks it’s gunpowder, clinging to the inside of his cheeks and under his tongue. He doesn’t mind, though; it offsets the twang of blood. He’s breathing deeply, and the face of a dead man hangs back over the edge of the ditch he stands in, staring at him like he’s interesting.

He stumbles away, feet sinking in the mud. He slips, stumbles onto the bank. There’s a shack, a house maybe, roof blown open like a deer carcass on the highway. _Lots of people fired mortars up here_.

Eugene steps into what is left of the building like he expects the walls to cave in on him. He remembers this, remembers the screaming child and the vacant faces of the parents and the dying breath of a woman in his arms. He turns the corner, knowing what he’s about to see, like the movies they kept repeating on camp but continued watching anyway.

He doesn’t see it.

Beneath the caved roof, mauled stomach and laboured breathing is not the woman. The body has a mop of dark curls, tan skin, and blue eyes Eugene would recognise anywhere.

“Merriell,” he says, which is already wrong because they’re still at war, they’re still on that fucking island, it should be _Snafu_. “Merriell,” he says anyway.

Eugene takes his position, hits his mark, takes his place sat next to the body, gently pulling him against his chest and holding his hand. He plays along because this is how it’s supposed to go, this is how it always goes, like it’s a script and his memory’s the screenwriter.

“Gene,” Merriell slurs, and the set collapses.

This isn’t how it goes, he thinks, and his heart stutters in his chest like film caught in the projector.

Merriell’s hand is in his, and his blood is on his clothes and his hands and his lap, and he’s looking up at Eugene with this weird middle-ground between complete trust and pure fear. Eugene’s hand finds its way to Merriell’s face, tilting it up to look at him as he tries to say something but never quite manages it. The image is blurred through his own tears.

When his body goes lax, Eugene clenches a fist in his hair and uses it to pull him tightly against his chest, lets the tears fall and screams.

He jolts awake, sitting up, and Merriell is there, because of course he is. Despite everything that has happened that evening, he’s still there next to him with a hand on his shoulder. He’s there with his understanding eyes and his sleep-mussed hair and his gentle touches, and Eugene is so grateful that he’s there, that he’s helping, that he’s alive, that he can’t hold back the flood anymore.

He pulls Merriell into a bruising kiss, clenches at his hair, pulls him down so they’re lying back, pulls him down so he gets to drown too. He can feel Merriell’s nails scrape against his scalp, feels him reposition to a better angle as he kisses back with a sense of yearning.

Merriell brings his hands to cup Eugene’s face and presses their foreheads together, parting their lips. “Gene-” he starts, like he’s suddenly unsure, worry seeping into his voice.

“Please,” Eugene says softly, grips his shirt with a desperate strength, and that’s all it takes.

Merriell kisses him once more, something between gentle and aching, and Eugene wants to cry at the marvel of it all. He almost whines when he pulls away, but watches with a fire in his core as Merriell begins to move down his body, positioning himself between Eugene’s legs.

Merriell is looking at him like he’s glowing, like he’s the sun and it’s been raining his whole life, and it’s all too much for Eugene to bear. He shakes his head unsteadily, cups Merriell’s jaw and brings him back up. He wants to, has wanted to for so long that he’d buried it deep enough down to overlook it, but he doesn’t want it to happen because they’re both trying and struggling to comfort each other.

Eugene kisses him again, shorter this time, before he rolls them both over and rests his head on Merriell’s chest, listening to the beat of his heart beneath his ribcage. He falls asleep to that rhythm and the feeling of Merriell lacing his fingers in his hair.

*

The bed is empty again when he wakes, and the sheets are tucked over him lightly in a way they definitely weren’t when he fell asleep. He pulls himself out of bed and goes downstairs to the kitchen.

Merriell jumps when the door opens, spinning around quickly from where he stands at the far counter. “Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” Eugene says.

Merriell gestures vaguely to his side where two mugs sit on the counter. “I made you coffee.”

“Thanks,” Eugene replies, walking towards him to pick it up.

Snafu watches him as he does, and Eugene tries not to find his concerned expression either endearing or amusing. “Listen, Eugene, if you don’t want-” he tries, “I mean, if you’d rather-”

“Merriell.” Eugene tries to give him his best expression of joking disdain before he brings a hand up to hold the back of his neck, and pulls Merriell in for a soft kiss. “Shut up,” he says, and gives Merriell a dozy smile. The dazed look on Merriell’s face is definitely worth it.

*

The days go like that, for a while, with easy domesticity and intimacy Eugene’s so sorely needed. He feels like he hasn’t eaten in a year and now it’s Thanksgiving, and despite his nightmares and anxiety and disconnection, Eugene feels like he can at last say he feels like he’s getting better.

When they finally – five days later, _finally_ because it feels like weeks – sleep together, Eugene lasts all of three minutes and Merriell laughs at him with a gleam in his eye and kisses him, and Eugene can taste both salt and a smile on his lips.

He gets his retribution the night after when Merriell lasts two.

It feels like a routine, and it feels natural despite something within him screaming that it isn’t. It’s _nice_ , above anything, and Eugene finds himself thinking that that is everything. They eat breakfast together, sometimes Eugene makes Merriell a sandwich to have at work – which is at a garage, he finally found out – and Merriell snorts but takes it anyway. Eugene spends the day reading and writing or various home improvement ventures (like fixing the window).

He laughs when Merriell tells him he’d _make a good wife_ , and they spend the evening wrapped in each other on the couch listening to the radio.

He writes another letter to his family, tells them he’s getting on well and he’s considering staying out there for a bit, that it’s helping clear his head.

Eugene also writes to Sid with an apology he means more than the one he first sent to his mother, and mentions Merriell (and crosses it out, replaces the name with _Snafu_ ). He asks how Mary is, how his studies are going.

He’s more productive than he’s been in months, and he manages to write pages to each of them rather than the obligatory couple of paragraphs he’d sent the first time he’d written home.

His Bible sits on Merriell’s bedside table upstairs, and it hasn’t been opened for a month when Eugene hears a knock at the door that evening. He looks up from the new ornithology book he bought and leans back to try and look out the window, thinking perhaps Merriell forgot his key. He can’t see who it is, can only see the edge of a shoulder, and he sighs as he gets up and walks to the door.

He opens it, and feels his spine straighten in surprise. He frowns in confusion.

“Edward?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok here's a quick note - i'm not going to be writing smut. i have in the past (on now orphaned works) and i just. don't like it so sorry if you're expecting that?
> 
> also next chapter is written which means i've only got two more left to write?? wack..
> 
> please let me know if there are any typos or w/e x


	6. crimson

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey! this is behind schedule bc some shit happened and long story short i didn't have access to my laptop until now so sorry
> 
> warning for fairly minor violence and period typical homophobia
> 
> unbeta'd, yell at me if there are any mistakes

Edward has this look about that is simultaneously dangerous and concerned. He smoulders on Merriell’s doorstep, tension set onto his shoulders like a great weight.

“You look,” _foreboding?_ Eugene thinks, “well,” he says.

“You gonna let me in?” Edward asks sharply.

Eugene stands back dazedly, holding the door open, and Edward pushes past. He looks up the stairs, into the living room with a sour, judgemental expression on his face. It’s a lot smaller than what he’s used to, Eugene realises, but to him it’s always felt homely. Then again, Edward has no feelings towards Merriell himself to warrant those kinds of feelings towards his home.

Once Edward has finished assessing the entrance hall, he turns around to face Eugene. “What the hell are you doing?”

“What?” he feels defensiveness rear within him.

“What’s going on, Eugene?” The question is softer, more concerned, intended to disarm.

It works a little, and Eugene drops his shoulders. “Edward, I-”

The door opens behind him and both of them turn, coming face to face with Merriell, who looks decidedly taken aback by the small gathering in his corridor.

“We having a party?” he asks, eyeing Edward warily.

Eugene sighs. “Merriell,” he says, tries to convey an apology in his name, “this is my brother, Edward.”

Merriell nods faintly at Eugene before he leans past and offers Edward a hand. “Merriell Shelton,” he introduces.

Edward, all Southern manners, shakes it. “Good to meet you,” he says, but the way his gaze drifts between the two of them puts Eugene on edge and makes him think he doesn’t quite mean it.

Eugene can see that Merriell’s grip on his brother’s hand is tight, almost like it’s a challenge. He feels a flare of pride, but it remains muffled by the buzz of his anxiousness. 

“I’ll go make some coffee,” Merriell says and drops his grasp. He offers a final troubled glance towards Eugene before disappearing into the kitchen.

“That your buddy?” Edward asks as he steps into the living room and sits down on one of the couches.

“Yeah,” Eugene replies, feeling a like he’s been called on by a teacher who knows full well he doesn’t know the answer.

His brother makes a face like he disapproves. “It’s certainly…cosy,” he says snidely. “Where you been sleeping?” he asks.

Eugene feels the blood drain from his face and nausea rise in to his throat, but he focuses on his breathing and musters the best poker face he can. “The couch,” he replies.

Edward seems almost satisfied with that answer. He stands back up. “Where’s the bathroom?”

“Upstairs,” he replies, feeling a little numb. When Edward doesn’t budge, seemingly expecting more information, he adds, “There’s two rooms up there, Edward. You ain’t gonna miss it.”

When Edward disappears upstairs, Eugene lets out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. Merriell re-enters with two cups of coffee.

“I’m sorry Mer, I didn’t know he was coming,” Eugene apologises immediately.

“Ain’t a problem, Eugene,” Merriell replies with an easy expression as he hands one cup to Eugene. He places the other on the side table by the couch.

“He’s gonna try and drag me home,” Eugene tells him.

Merriell freezes. “Yeah?” he says, his voice purposefully emotionless.

“I ain’t going,” he adds quickly.

Merriell offers a smile in response to that. It’s both glad and reassuring, like the glances Sid used to give him over the dinner table when he was over at Thanksgiving and had to suffer his extended family. When Edward comes back down the stairs, Eugene watches him school his expression as soon as he sees Merriell. He can’t identify the look that came before it.

“Shelton,” he greets again, uneasily.

Merriell nods, and the silence between them is heavy, nothing like the comfort Eugene finds in quiet with him. It’s uncomfortable, like dead air.

“You serve?” Merriell asks to break the silence, even though Eugene knows he knows the answer.

“Yeah,” Edward replies. “Europe.” A wry smile graces his face. “How was my brother out there?”

“Real hero,” Merriell says, and though he sounds sarcastic, his eyes are sincere. “I wouldn’t be here without him,” he adds with more candour, and Eugene looks down in embarrassment.

The conversation tempers out from there, the flare of it gone like the dying light of an evening.

“You want a beer?” Merriell offers.

Edward shakes his head. “Another time, maybe,” he says, though there’s a tightness in his expression that makes Eugene think it’ll never happen. “I’m going to go to my hotel,” he explains, then to Eugene, “you sure you don’t want me to book you in too? Get you off the couch for a night?” It is a poorly disguised jab, and one Eugene is deeply grateful that Merriell doesn’t rise to.

Eugene follows him to the door and opens it for him.

“We need to talk,” Edward says as he goes, clearly hoping Merriell is out of earshot. “I’ll come by tomorrow.”

“Come by in the evening,” he says. He doesn’t want to force Merriell to bear his brother’s presence more than is necessary, but he desperately needs moral support. “I’m heading into town in the day.”

“I’ll meet you,” Edward suggests, although it’s more of a statement than an invitation. “We’ll grab a drink.”

Eugene really wants to fight him on it, but even the short contact he’s had with his brother has drained him and so, he just nods.

“Great,” he grins. “I’m staying at the Monteleone. Meet me at say, two?”

“Okay,” he replies, trying not to sound like he’s giving in in his voice.

Edward begins to walk away. “Good night, Gene,” he calls.

“Night,” Eugene replies and shuts the door.

He exhales and rests his forehead against the wood. It’s cool and rough on his skin. He feels Merriell’s hands on his waist and his lips on the back of his neck, soft enough to send a shiver down his spine.

“You okay?” he asks quietly, and Eugene can feel his breath on his neck.

“Yeah,” he tells the door before turning around, replacing Merriell’s hands on his hips when they move away. “Can we just go to bed?”

Merriell nods and takes him by the hand.

*

The Monteleone is ostentatious and flashy and expensive, and it makes Eugene’s skin crawl. Edward meets him outside the door at exactly two o’clock with a comment that he was allowed inside, and takes him to a bar not far down the street. He buys him a drink and sighs when Eugene isn’t immediately forthcoming on conversation.

“How’ve you been, Eugene?” he asks earnestly.

Eugene sips his beer. “Good,” he says.

Edward looks at him doubtfully.

“No, really,” he insists. “It’s been good to get away.”

“Mom’s worried,” Edward says. “Father’s worried too, though he’ll never admit it.”

Eugene takes another sip of his beer and doesn’t look at his brother. “You got a point, Ed?”

“You know I do,” Edward replies and takes a sip from his whiskey.

Of course Eugene knows. He knows that his brother’s there to bring him back to Alabama, to tell him he needs a job and a girl and a normal life, to stop their parents’ worrying and get some real guidance. It is wholly unappealing.

“I’m sleeping better,” Eugene tells him instead of arguing. “Couldn’t remember the last time I’d slept a whole night before I came here.”

He wants to talk about his dissipating guilt, how his panic attacks are becoming increasingly few and far between, how he’s regained the ability to be interested in something. He wants to tell him about the birds, how he’s thinking about starting studying again.

Eugene wants to talk, but Edward has his brows knitted together in such a way that he knows what he’s going to ask next.

“If you’re better, then why can’t you come back?”

“I said I’m getting better, not that I am.”

He tries to ignore Edward’s eye roll. “Look, Eugene. I get that you need time, believe me, I do,” he stresses, “but you need to get on with your life.” He tries to seek out eye contact, but Eugene doesn’t give it to him. “The best way to move on is to do something. Start working. Find a girl,” he puts emphasis on that for some reason, and it puts Eugene on edge. “Anything.”

“But it has to be in Mobile, right?” Eugene asks, accusatorily.

Edward finishes his whiskey and gestures to the bartender for another. “Mobile’s your home, Gene.”

It is, technically, correct, but Eugene finds himself thinking that maybe it’s not anymore. He thinks about home, what it means to him, and all he can picture are blue eyes and curly hair.

“Mom ask you to come, Edward?” Eugene asks.

“No,” he replies. “I could just see what you’re doing to her.”

Those words annoy Eugene more than anything else his brother’s said. They’re meant to guilt him into agreeing, guilt him into following Edward’s request to come back. All they succeed in doing is making him stand up off his barstool and make to leave, the unfinished beer remaining on the bar.

“Eugene,” Edward says. “Just listen to me.”

He needs to tell him no, but the word gets stuck in his throat as he tries. “I’m not ready,” he says instead, and walks out of the bar. Edward doesn’t follow.

He walks back to the house, counting his breaths and feeling the air in his lungs as he walks. He barely notices anything around him, just knows that he’s walking. When he gets back, he immediately sits down and buries his head in a new book.

*

The sun is setting when there’s a thump outside and Eugene looks up from his book, a hundred pages in, at nothing in particular. It’s quiet for a beat, and then he can hear Edward’s voice. He can’t make it out, muffled through the wood, but it’s definitely him, loud and heated. Something uncertain churns in his gut and he puts the book down. He stands, walks to the door and opens it.

His brother has a fist crushed in Merriell’s collar, pressing him against the wall with all the gentleness of a car crash. Eugene can see where the shirt collar digs into his skin, where Edward’s clenched hand presses against his throat. He looks like he’s struggling to breath, but his jaw is clenched and he stares at Edward in defiance. There’s blood running from Merriell’s nose, a graze on his cheek.

Edward’s saying something, shouting something in his face, but Eugene doesn’t hear it over the roar of blood in his ears, his vision pulsing as his legs move him across the front garden in strides on socked feet before he can even process it. He only realises he’s thrown a punch when his knuckles make contact with his brother’s eye socket.

Edward stumbles away, clutching his face. When he regains his balance, he throws some betrayed, surprised look at Eugene, like Eugene’s the bad guy, the one in the wrong. It stirs another wave of aggression within him and he feels it burn in his fists. He wants to hit him again, push him onto the parched ground and bury him. He doesn’t even think Edward would fight back. The expression on his face is surprised, like he can’t comprehend that his kid brother could do that. Eugene wants nothing more than to prove him wrong.

But Merriell heaves beside him, leaning on the wall as he regains his breath, so Eugene throws nothing but an appalled glare at his brother as he goes to help him up. His first touch his met by a flinch and his heart clenches, makes him want to break Edward’s nose.

“It’s me,” he murmurs and tries again.

Merriell doesn’t flinch, allows himself to get pulled to standing and leans on the wall behind him, his breath evening out. Eugene traces his fingers over the scrape on Merriell’s cheek. He can see him watching him, those intense blue eyes seeking eye contact. Eugene glances up, but pays more attention to the blood on his face.

Nothing looks broken, but he hopes Merriell has a first aid kit and some antiseptic somewhere. He knows he’ll have gin or whiskey at least. 

“You okay?” he asks gently, not for anyone but Merriell’s ears to hear.

Merriell nods and doesn’t say anything. It gives Eugene enough reassurance to turn around, and he puts his body between Merriell and Edward.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he bites.

Edward looks at him incredulously. “What do I think _I’m_ doing?” he asks. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Eugene stares, and the fight in his heart falters. “What?”

He sighs. “Come back,” Edward says, pleads, the previous anger gone. His hand drops from his face and Eugene can see the red branded on the skin of his face.

He just keeps on staring.

“I know you ain’t been sleeping on that couch, Gene,” Edward says desperately.

Eugene wants to feel worry, feel the clutches of anxiety on his heart, but he just feels cold, like a bucket of ice has been tipped down his back. He wants nothing more than for his brother to leave, to go back to how it was before he got there.

“Your bag’s in his room. Your Bible’s on his nightstand,” he explains. “You’re not yourself,” he says. Then softer, “Come back home, Eugene. We can help you.”

He’s surprised to find that no part of him wants to. That something inside that clawed at his innards like a rat in a cage and told him what was happening was wrong remains silent. Eugene doesn’t miss it.

He glances back to Merriell, and the look in his eyes – the look like he _expects_ Eugene to leave – and his heart quakes in his chest like a boat swallowed by a raging ocean.

“No,” he says softly. He turns back to face Edward. “No,” he repeats firmly.

Edward squares back up, annoyance in his features like when Eugene’s stubbornness irked him growing up. “Is this what you want, Gene?” he asks. “This- this-” he gestures broadly, “this abomination?”

Eugene knows the words – of course he does, the Sledges went to church every Sunday – and yet he can’t align what the book says to him and how he feels. It must be wrong, he thinks, it must be, because God wouldn’t have made him like this if it was. It must be wrong, he thinks, because God is supposed to love him no matter what.

It must be wrong, he thinks, because whatever emotions he feels for Merriell every time he looks at him cannot be anything close to evil.

He swallows the lump in his throat. “I want you to leave,” he says simply.

Edward growls in frustration. “Eugene-”

“I want you fucking gone, Edward,” he says, closing his eyes and spitting the words out, willing them into it existence.

It works. Edward goes, storming off down the street, and suddenly the only thing in Eugene’s world is Merriell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> also! big thank you for the comments last chapter!! i haven't had a chance to reply yet and i'm quite busy and wanted to get the chapter up
> 
> had a bit of a shite weekend so i'm also behind on writing - next chapter is already complete but i want to stagger it a little while i work on the last chapter. i know what's happening but u know.. words..


	7. conquer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi! i'm out of my routine of every three days bc i'm v busy atm sorry!! am hopefully going to be able to finish writing the last chapter soon but i am. struggling with a bit of writer's block i'm afraid! anyway here's an actual conversation! amazing!
> 
> as always. yell if there are mistakes

Merriell leads himself back into the house, Eugene trailing behind silently. He feels like he did the first few days on camp, the feeling of not knowing what to do consuming him, and he wishes he had orders to follow. He does what he knows, and takes it one step at a time.

He sits Merriell down and takes off his shoes for him, hands him a tissue for his bloody nose before heading to the kitchen to get some ice out of the freezer. He wraps it in a towel and returns, pressing it gently against the bridge of Merriell’s nose. He flinches anyway, but looks apologetic about it.

“You got any antiseptic?” Eugene asks.

Merriell looks at him incredulously for the suggestion and Eugene instantly feels more at ease. He finds himself smiling slightly, and Merriell smiles back. Eugene heads to the cupboard he knows holds the whiskey, gets it out and pulls out his handkerchief, pouring a little onto it.

“Hey,” Merriell protests, “don’t waste that, it’s a single malt.”

“I’m not wasting it,” he replies and takes a seat next to Merriell.

He gently takes Merriell’s head in his hand, tilting it so he can dab the handkerchief against the graze on his cheekbone. Merriell hisses and Eugene resists the urge to stop.

“Sorry,” he murmurs, though the apology isn’t really for hurting him.

Eugene is surprised Merriell doesn’t protest about being cleaned up, lets Eugene do it and remains lenient in his hands. He figured he’d rather have done it himself. Instead, he sits quietly and watches Eugene with the one eye that doesn’t have an ice pack in the way, as if every one of his movements is fascinating.

He cleans the graze, picks out the splinters – Edward must have shoved his face against the rough wood of the house, he thinks queasily – and puts down the handkerchief. He takes Merriell’s wrist, the one holding the ice, in his hand, pulls it away from his face.

“Let me look,” he says quietly, if for nothing other than to let Merriell know what he’s doing.

Eugene’s fingertips ghost over his skin. Merriell’s nose is red, both with the stains of blood and the impact, but Eugene still doesn’t think it’s broken. There’s more redness on the bridge of his nose, hooking under his eyes, and Eugene thinks with a strange and creeping sense of guilt that he’ll be sporting two black eyes tomorrow.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“Not your fault, Eugene,” Merriell says.

“He’s my brother,” Eugene replies. “It wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for me.”

Merriell shrugs. “Still don’t make it your fault.”

Eugene wants to ask what Edward said. Merriell hasn’t said much since it happened, so it must have got to him. Part of him wishes the walls were thinner so that he could’ve heard it himself. Maybe then he’d have been able to break Edward’s nose like he wants to now.

He figures if Merriell doesn’t want to answer, he won’t.

“What did he say?”

Merriell breaks eye contact, leans forward onto his knees. Eugene thinks for a moment that he’s not going to reply, but he does. “That I should leave you alone,” he says, with a voice that sounds tightly controlled. It’s nothing Eugene didn’t expect, but Merriell continues. “That you’re not like me and you don’t belong here.” He looks back to Eugene. “That I’m perverting you.”

Eugene wants to punch his brother all over again and huffs out a heated laugh as he stands, hoping to channel his ire into movement, taking the ice pack with the intention to return it to the kitchen. “That’s bullshit,” he says confidently, ready to go to bed. He wants nothing more than to finish up and have a hot shower, forget about his brother for a while. To hold Merriell against his chest, go to sleep with his hair prickling his nose.

Merriell doesn’t reply and the silence echoes in the empty room. Eugene turns back around. He looks muted, quiet, and Eugene has a sinking feeling in his chest.

“What is it?” he asks earnestly.

He stays silent for a moment, looking up at Eugene. “It’s just…maybe he’s right, Eugene,” Merriell says, something wearily exasperated in his voice.

Eugene feels his jaw drop slightly. He puts the ice pack down on the side table. “What?”

Merriell looks at him like he’s stupid, and it doesn’t help his mood one bit. “Maybe he’s right,” he repeats, and Eugene can feel the whir of irritation in his gut.

“No,” Eugene shakes his head, puts a hand on his hip. “No, I heard what you said, Mer, I just want to know what you mean.”

“You know what I mean,” Merriell says bitterly.

The worst thing about it is that Eugene does know what he means, or at least what Edward meant when he said it. He means that Eugene should be back in Mobile, going out with some pretty girl, not sleeping with a man in a ramshackle house a hundred and forty miles from home. He means that it’s Merriell’s fault he’s like this, that he’s not really queer, he’s just looking for comfort and Merriell’s taking advantage.

In that instant, Eugene knows better. He’d have been queer whether he’d met Merriell or not. It’s a terrible time to have that realisation, but Eugene’s epiphanies have never come when they’re most needed. He is, was, will be queer, and Merriell’s presence hasn’t caused anything.

He’s just found someone it’s worth the risk for.

“Maybe I am ruining you,” Merriell says, and it flares anger inside him.

“Maybe I want to be ruined,” he snaps.

Merriell practically rolls his eyes. “That’s a dumbass thing to say, Gene, and you know it.”

He does know it. “I’m not _ruined_ ,” he says, emphasising the word like it leaves a sour taste in his mouth. “And neither are you.”

Merriell gives him this knowing look, a self-deprecating smile. “Eugene,” he says, like he does when Eugene says anything he thinks is blatantly wrong.

Eugene suddenly feels very tired, and his shoulders drop. “Are we back where we started, Mer?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Is that why you didn’t say goodbye?”

Merriell looks at him for a beat. “You still on that? I apologised, didn’t I?”

“No, you didn’t,” he tells him. They’ve never even talked about it. “Now tell me.”

He drops eye contact, finding something interesting to look at somewhere around Eugene’s feet.

“Is that why you left me on the train?”

“Yes.” He looks up. “You don’t deserve this.”

“Who are you to decide what I deserve?” he asks, irritation seeping into his voice.

“Gene-” Merriell tries.

“No, who are you to decide what I deserve?” he says. “Who are you to decide what _you_ deserve?”

“You don’t need me, Gene,” he replies, looking down again, and his voice is so small that Eugene realises this shouldn’t be an argument. He’s still angry, but the aggression drops. “I’m all fucked up.”

Eugene just stares.

“My nickname’s Snafu, Eugene, you’ve known that from the start,” he continues, like he’s mistaken Eugene’s expression for surprise. “I’ve been fucked up all my life, and that ain’t gonna change.”

It’s all so clear then, like the cool night skies in the Pacific, with the stars prickling against the unrelenting darkness. Eugene knows Merriell doesn’t mention his family, guesses they must have dropped contact years ago. He thinks the message must have been drilled into his stubborn skull since the day he was born, knows that the nickname must’ve been a constant reminder, a role that Merriell fulfilled with ease. Some of it was. Fucked up, that is – the teeth-pulling, the apathy – but Eugene can see where it must have come from.

He can see that little queer boy, in all senses of the words, growing up in an unsympathetic Louisiana household. He can see him in front of him, in the blue of his eyes, the weight of his shoulders on his back. He can see all that fight, fighting for anyone and anything, with no one to fight for him.

Eugene steps forward like he did in the hall where he put his name forward for the Marines. He places a hand tenderly under Merriell’s chin, tilting his head up to look him in the eyes.

“You’re not fucked up, Mer,” he says. He gently pushes Merriell back so that he leans against the back of the sofa rather than forward with his hands on his knees. “You don’t get to decide what I need,” he says softly, kinder this time, and kneels with his legs either side of Merriell’s thighs, sitting on his lap. “And neither does Edward.”

He cups Merriell’s face, feels Merriell’s hands come up to rest on his hips.

“Only I get to decide that,” he murmurs against Merriell’s lips before he kisses him.

They stay like that for a while, gentle and tender and with no promises of anything more. Merriell is the one to break them apart, pressing his forehead against Eugene’s to stop him trying to follow his lips as they move away.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles.

Eugene can feel his own frown against Merriell’s forehead. “What do you mean?”

“For leaving,” Merriell says, and Eugene feels his heart settle in his chest. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> REALLY a huge thank you to comments i'll hopefully get around to replying soon you guys are amazing <3
> 
> really though - it might be a week until my next update i'm afraid. i'm heading back home soon for christmas so i need to get everything in order and let me tell you. i am nowhere near lmao,, but i promise!! i will finish this if for no other reason that being a perfectionist lmao


	8. denouement

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey! i finished it! sorry for making you wait so long
> 
> i think this chapter is a little like.. more relaxed i guess?? idk a lot of what came before it is very full of verse but i kind of wanted end this in a softer, gentler and more human way if that makes sense
> 
> as always, correct me of any spelling/grammar issues - i try my best but i'm not perfect

The bruises are beginning to fade, but Merriell’s more subdued, compliant, and Eugene doesn’t like it.

He doesn’t like how he receives little more than a few words in return to anything he says, how Merriell doesn’t argue with him over anything, how he won’t tell him what he wants. Eugene feels like he could ask anything of Merriell and receive it, and he hates it because he doesn’t think Merriell would ever ask the same of him.

The house feels empty when Merriell’s at work, and it feels empty when he’s back.

In part, it’s what drives Eugene to start looking for work. That and the guilt he feels when Merriell won’t take his money for rent. He needs something to occupy his time, and he doesn’t feel ready to start education again, so he starts to write to newspapers.

He’s so immersed in it, and Merriell doesn’t mention anything, that he wakes up Thanksgiving morning and they’ve done nothing to prepare.

Eugene doesn’t have that strong an affinity for Thanksgiving, but it is the first – excluding those overseas – that he hasn’t spent with his family. He doesn’t ask, but he thinks it may be the first in a long time Merriell hasn’t spent alone. Both of them are out of sorts, and it doesn’t mix well.

The air in the kitchen is tense, like it’s about to snap, and Merriell musters up some chicken and rice meal with too many spices for Eugene’s delicate taste buds. He thinks it might be good, but his throat is burning and an annoyance rumbles in his gut.

“Should’ve got a turkey,” he comments before taking a swig of water, which feels like throwing oil onto the fire smouldering in his mouth.

“Should’ve reminded me the date,” Merriell replies.

Eugene tries to glare at Merriell, but his eyes are purposefully trained on his food. “Who forgets Thanksgiving?”

“Both of us, apparently,” Merriell smarts, looking up with a smile that holds no warmth. He drops his gaze back to the chicken. “I’m sure your brother would’ve remembered,” he mutters under his breath.

“Speak up,” Eugene says, placing his cutlery down and leaning back in his chair.

“You heard me,” he replies and mirrors Eugene’s pose.

He did hear him, and he crosses his arms. “What’s my family got to do with this?”

Merriell rolls his eyes. “You’d much rather be back home right now, Eugene.”

Eugene stares in disbelief, realising belatedly that that’s a mistake as Merriell takes his silence as agreement and stands up, starting to clear both their plates away.

“I’m sorry I don’t cook like your mama, Sledgehammer,” he says and Eugene tries his best not to flinch at the name, “but don’t go complaining about it when you’re the one who chose to be here.”

Eugene stands, struggling not to take that as a hint that Merriell wants him out. His heart leaps, panic clawing at his insides, but he’s already angry and doesn’t change his course. “I can choose to leave,” he lies.

He almost regrets it when he sees fear flash in Merriell’s eyes, but it is quickly covered. “Why don’t you?”

There are a thousand reasons why, most of them something to do with how Merriell’s become more important to him than anyone else, so he cracks another question. “So I’m not enough for you now?”

Merriell stares at him and takes a deep breath. “You’ll always be enough for me, Eugene,” he says more calmly, “and I’ll give you anything you want. But-” he starts, but cuts himself off.

Eugene waits for more, but it doesn’t come. “But what?”

“It’s just-”

“Just what?” he snaps.

“When are you going to leave, Eugene?”

The question isn’t exasperated or annoyed, but distinctly desperate and Merriell’s staring at him with sad eyes. Eugene understands, and he falters. His anger dissolves like a campfire in a monsoon.

“Merriell,” he says, tempering.

“I know you told me I don’t decide what you want, and that’s not what I’m doing,” he insists, no more anger in his voice either, “but you ain’t gonna be here forever.”

Eugene stays silent, not touching him no matter how much his heart aches to, hoping that Merriell will finally talk to him.

“You’re gonna realise this is all bullshit,” he says, tone edging towards bitterness, “and go back to your fucking Little House on the Prairie crap soon enough.”

At first glance, he seems angry, but Eugene knows him better now to know that he isn’t.

“Of course you’re going to leave, Eugene,” he adds, quieter.

He doesn’t say, _you’re going to leave me_ , but Eugene hears it anyway. He steps forward, placing a hand on Merriell’s shoulder so he can’t turn away.

“I ain’t going nowhere, Mer,” he says, emphasises, trying to put as much certainty into his voice as he feels. “You ain’t some temporary fix.” He emphasis it by cupping his jaw.

Merriell’s shoulders slump, leaning into his touch, and Eugene hopes it’s because he believes him and not because he wants to appease him.

“I’m looking for a job,” Eugene continues. “Help contribute to the rent and all,” he says. “I wouldn’t be doing that if I weren’t planning on staying.”

Merriell looks at him with uncertainty in his eyes. “But your family-”

“Fuck ‘em,” he says, surprising himself a little. He smiles weakly, and receives the same in return from Merriell. “I choose you.”

He kisses him firmly, both hands clenched in his hair.

“I’ll always choose you.”

*

There’s a chill on the breeze and the windows are shut though the curtains are open, and the usual ambient sounds from outside distinctly absent. Both of them are quiet too, worn out, legs entangled under the thin covers. Blue light of the full moon settles on Merriell’s skin with a gleam. His eyes are almost black with his blown pupils. Eugene lightly traces his fingertips over the bones of his cheek and brow, across the nigh invisible freckles that scatter across his face.

Merriell has always had a sense of beauty about him, even when they first met, in the sweltering heat and with mud crusted to his boots. Scary and intimidating and stunning, the light of the island’s sun casting him in gold, like Apollo in the fire of the sun.

Eugene cups Merriell’s face, brushing a thumb against his swollen lips.

Merriell doesn’t comment, doesn’t say anything, staring at him with the strange look of awe he often has when Eugene is in his bed. There’s something so tender about it, and Eugene has never needed or wanted anyone more.

For all that happened during the war, for all that it did to him, if he had the chance to do it all again, he wouldn’t change a thing. If none of it had happened as it did, he would never be in New Orleans in bed with Merriell under the pale blue light of the moon.

“I love you,” he says as he realises it. He freezes immediately, seeing his own surprise mirrored on Merriell’s face.

There is a beat of silence, terrifying and taught, before Merriell’s face softens.

“I love you,” Merriell replies, like it’s the easiest thing in the world.

Maybe it is, Eugene thinks.

*

Eugene gets a column in a local paper. It doesn’t pay much, but it’s enough to start with and for him to feel like he’s contributing, and they don’t need him to come in more than once a week. It also pays enough for him to think about getting Merriell a Christmas present.

Growing up, it never would have occurred to him that he’d might have a life anywhere outside of Alabama. He does miss it sometimes, and New Orleans often seems far too big in comparison to Mobile, but in all he’s happy. He does wish things with his family would be different, and finds himself hoping that soon enough they will, but Eugene is surprised to find himself willing to leave it all behind.

He has a job, and a house, and someone to come home to every day. It’s all he needs.

The letter arrives on a Saturday, a week and a half before Christmas, and cracks the armour of his newfound domesticity.

Even without the return address, Eugene would recognise his mother’s elegant and practiced scrawl anywhere. He runs his fingers over the lettering, as if he might be able to feel the disapproval in the way the pen has pressed into the envelope. He walks back into the living room, and Merriell looks up from reading his newspaper on the couch.

“You gonna open that?” he asks.

Eugene continues to stare at the letter, not sure if he even wants to open it.

“Who’s it from?” Merriell tries again, voice a little more serious.

“My mother,” he replies with a frown.

Merriell looks at him for a moment, and Eugene can imagine he’s thinking of what to say. “Do you want me to open it?” he asks.

Eugene looks up from the letter to meet Merriell’s eyes, a little confused.

“If I read it, I can tell you if it’s something you want to read or not,” he explains.

He wants to argue and say that he’ll read it anyway, but before he can protest he’s already handed the envelope over, his hands having made the decision for him.

Merriell silently opens it, placing the torn envelope on the empty space next to him. Eugene tries not to read over his shoulder and goes to sit on the other couch, leant forward with his arms on his knees.

“Your ma take calligraphy lessons?” he asks.

“Mer,” Eugene says, something like a warning in his voice.

Merriell says nothing more, and Eugene watches as his eyes track down the page. A frown begins to appear on his face, and it makes Eugene’s stomach churn. He anxiously bounces his leg a few times before he notices it and stops.

A moment later Merriell looks up, a sort of dazed expression on his face, and Eugene stares expectantly.

“She wants to know if we want to go over for Christmas dinner,” he says.

It wasn’t what he expected, Eugene must admit. He says as such. “What?”

Merriell hands him the paper.

“We?” Eugene questions.

“We,” Merriell confirms.

Eugene takes the paper, fiddling with the crease in its middle where it was folded to fit the envelope as he reads. _Dearest Eugene_ , his mother begins, and somehow even that makes his heart swell. He reads, and for the first time since he came to New Orleans, he finds himself missing her.

She expresses her disappointment about not seeing him for Thanksgiving, and how she hopes he is doing well. She tells him that Mary – Sid’s Mary – is expecting, and Eugene finds himself feeling a little dejected that Sid hasn’t written to him. His mother continues to mention that Edward will be spending Christmas with his wife’s family and proceeds to invite both Eugene and his _friend_ over.

Eugene doesn’t believe for one moment that his mother doesn’t know the nature of his and Merriell’s relationship, if for either Edward telling her or her own understanding. His mother always had a way of working things out.

He can sense the dissatisfaction in her words, but the way she signs off with _unconditionally_ before her tidy signature is warm still. It isn’t acceptance, but it’s close.

He wants to go, finds himself being drawn back home for the first time in months. It isn’t himself he needs to convince, though.

“You’ll come, right?” he asks.

Merriell looks slightly unsure, like he wants to protest, and Eugene swallows.

“You’ll come with me?” he says, rephrasing.

With that, Merriell’s doubtful expression fades and softens. “Anywhere,” he says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading!! it's been lovely reading your comments the whole time and i really appreciate them all!!
> 
> maybe i'll see you in the future :^)


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